Things Are Getting Right Up My Nose

I'm enjoying the nice long weekend to and the decent weather to boot. What more can a golfer ask for? I actually managed to slip out of work on Thursday afternoon (thank you flexi time) and hooked up with Anthony "Kerching" Ayres from our Saturday swindle for a game. I didn't play great but used the round for some good on course practice. Anthony however had a sterling game and shot a personal best 89.

This weekend is the Haig Cup at Royal Ascot. It is a two round event but you can pick which two days of the four days (Good Friday to Bank Holiday Monday) you want to play on. It is a bogey competition. Apart from that word being a source of classroom merriment as a child, a bogey event is basically a matchplay game against the course. If you get a nett birdie, for example making a par on a hole you get a shot on, you win the hole. A nett par (after any shots received) is classed as a half and anything more than that the course is deemed to have won that hole.

I played my first round yesterday morning. Getting to the first tee about 7.45 it was swamped with golfers looking to get out in the coolest part of the day and get their first card in. I was playing with my great golfing pals, Mike Stannard (12 handicap) Colin Osborn (also off 12) and Matt Davis or "Sundance" as we know him who has been cut after a stellar April (and now off 20).

I have to say there is a certain pattern emerging in competitions and it is getting right up my nose. I am hitting the ball pretty well and the early stages yesterday were no exception. No drama down the 1st and a fairway piercing drive down the 2nd. I then pulled my second shot into the fairway bunker left. A hanging lie saw me find the greenside bunker right and I walk off with a six, admittedly a halved hole, having wasted a shot. I compounded that on the next. I hit a great drive to only leave 99 yards in. I'm standing there with just a wedge in my hand and manage to hoick it left of the green and into the bunker. I then try and get too smart with the recovery and leave the first escape in there. I walk off with a 6 and a loss from nowhere. The pattern continued when I three putted the 4th for another defeat. The course is 2 up on me and sniggering itself silly.

I then managed to get one back with a good par at the 5th and stole a rare par at the par 3 6th which regular readers know is a real nemesis hole. I hit a good 4 iron into the heart of the green and two putted. Standing on the 9th I'm back to just one down. I hit a good drive a little right which missed the large fairway bunker but left me with just a 6 iron in from a slightly downhill lie. Now admittedly I didn't put a great swing on the shot and it was pushed right but I didn't deserve what happened next. It landed on the trolley path and shot 45 degrees straight right and flew across the putting green and was well and truly out of bounds. Another hole lost but one errant shot harshly punished. I'm beginning to think if it wasn't for the bad luck I seem to be getting lately in competitions I'd have no luck at all.

Mr Angry was beginning to rise again and was simmering on a low heat by the time I reached the 12th tee. I'd found both the 10th and 11th green in regulation and then managed to three putt both times to snatch a half from the jaws of a win. However I did redeem myself with a rare par 4 at the 12th with a good chip and a single putt. The good mood wasn't to last and a defeat at the next and a lost ball courtesy of a wild slice off the 14th meant I was suddenly three down. I managed to steady the ship but finished the round three down to the course. Coming back in,  we found playing with me must have paid off in some fashion as "Kerching" had played a career round. He'd played the first nine holes in one over gross and finished the whole round in 80 off a 24 handicap and was sitting there at +9.

To be fair to him, he's one of these guys that has wanted to get cut for a while but never managed to do it when it mattered in a club competition. It never stopped him taking the money on a Saturday morning although to give him his dues he always got the chips in with his winnings. However such a performance will give his handicap a serious nose bleed after it has been calculated and whether he goes on and wins the overall prize or not it was still a super round.

And so what did the new dawn bring today. Well apart from the weather being even hotter than yesterday not much from me really. I played my second round of the Haig Cup with the same group as yesterday. To be honest I wasn't really that focused and knew I couldn't win and that the best I was playing for was a decent score today and a bit of pride.

The mood wasn't improved by a loss at the first when my tee shot went right and I could only hack short of the green in two. It takes a rare kind of idiot to repeat such basic errors as missing the 3rd green from 100 yards but I did so today. Granted it went into the right hand bunker this time but a miss is a miss. I wasn't helped that there was hardly any sand in the bunker and my club skidded on the hard base of the trap and the ball shot over the green. I made two solid pars at the 4th and 5th and despite putting my tee shot at the 6th into a bunker felt cautiously optimistic I could get it out and give myself a putt for a half. It came out well. Too well and over the green. By the time I'd duffed the chip coming back I'd lost another hole. I lost another at the 8th. I hit the ball flush with a seven iron to a 143 yard flag which is a 7 iron all day long for me. Not today though and it waved at the green as it flew over it. Bugger.

With absolutely nothing riding on the back nine and not even battered pride at stake I found it hard to get any competitive juices running. I did make a lovely par at the 10th finally hitting an approach shot straight to within 8 feet but failing to convert the putt. I got a half at the next and then yet again I got punished for only a slight error in judgement. I tried to take a fraction too much off the dog-leg from the tee and it came down perilously close to the tree line guarding the right edge of the fairway. Of course when I got there it had landed right at the base of a tree with hardly any room to make a swing. I moved it about five yards forward and then put my next in the bunker. I hit a good recovery to 6 feet and finally, finally made a putt for a battling five, nett four and a half. I lost the next three holes through a mixture of even more bad fortune, two poor swings and a general dis-interest in proceedings by this stage.

My misery was compounded when I hooked a tee shot out of bounds on the 17th tee with a hook and then proceeded to put two out of bounds off the 18th tee with a slice. In the end I finished a miserable 6 down on the day and 9 down overall. I won't know where that puts me until Tuesday at the earliest but it I'll be looking a long way down the results sheet to find my name. Mike Stannard had a great round today and managed a personal best in competition play at Royal Ascot of 79 with a great birdie four at the last. The downside to that is that he's likely to get a handicap cut and so be off a lower handicap when he partners me for the Jubilee Cup next weekend which I am currently holder of (although not with Mike as my partner)

So what can I take away from my two rounds apart from a glowing red face and arms. Well on the face of it very little. However I have to believe that sooner rather than later, I am going to get some reward for the ball striking I'm producing and get away with some loose shots so that I can finally string a score together. Don't get me wrong, if I'm slicing, topping it, hitting fat or generally playing rubbish golf I'd hold my hand up and admit I'm not  playing well enough. The annoying thing is I'm driving it much better of late, my new short game is finally emerging from the darkness and I am making good contact with 90% of my shots. It is schoolboy errors and a lack of focus and concentration that is holding me back. I need to get the putter warmed up (and decide which one I want to keep in the bag) and work on the chipping and putting.

I think I might need to give this book another read. I need to try and alter the mindset away from worrying too much about how well (or not) I'm playing in a competition and try and relax more. The problem is I seem to make the same basic errors in social rounds as well and so it isn't a case of trying too hard or putting too much pressure on myself. I do feel lady luck hasn't shone down on me either but I firmly believe you make your own luck sometimes. Get rid of the mistakes and maybe the putts will start to fall instead. We can but hope.

However it isn't all doom and gloom. There are two more days before work beckons again and another round is booked for Monday. Therefore in summary and in honour of the bogey competition this weekend and my schoolboy humour, it's snot as bad as it could be!